


Say No To This

by articulatez



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Everything Hurts, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 21:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20645693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/articulatez/pseuds/articulatez
Summary: There's no lesson in this story, and not all love stories end the way they should. A Pearl assigned to Jasper after Pink Diamond's shattering grew to be so much more. She would follow Jasper to the end of everything she knows.





	Say No To This

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Wrecker and the Wrecked](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7908304) by [TheDandyCrickette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDandyCrickette/pseuds/TheDandyCrickette). 

Pearls began as open shells to be harvested. Assigned for life to serve no matter how menial or degrading the task, Pearl couldn't think to question or disobey an order and the orange Pearl cast in the light of a celebrity war hero was not an exception. The admiration was programmed until it wasn't. The obedience was out of fear and instinct until it wasn't. An off-color gem offshoot of an off-color gem, and the latter unprepared for the responsibilities of training her, PB stumbled through basic routine and protocol like a fool. She made so many mistakes, all of them piling up. It seemed impossible that Jasper could ever benefit from keeping her around. Missed appointments. Uneven hems. Broken manicures. Unpleasant conversations. PB's yellow eyes lingering everywhere. Gems who could not conform ought to be disposed of.

Jasper was a taut wire about to snap in two until PB introduced music to their shared dwelling. The contrabass, the aruding, the attempts at singing even though her voice was all wrong (the lilt a Pearl should have contained a guttural rasp not unlike her Jasper's, landing her deep in the contralto range) changed things little by little by little. Her Gem's feet tapped and she nodded in time and she smiled showing frightening, ivory teeth. She had started to steady the anxiety PB could see wrestled with her thoughts. Pride disrupted her fear enough for her programming to malfunction.

Years and years after they had become acquainted, PB no longer stumbled over niceties and obedience. Jasper didn't startle over unexpected noise and flashes of light. Other gems attended PB's one-gem orchestral performances, hiding her ever-glowing pride. If Jasper noticed her covetous smiles she never said a word. And she wanted more. She wanted to fight the way her Jasper did.

She wanted to change from dresses and leotards to grand, sweeping capes and thick armor. She wanted to stand beside Jasper in the arena where onlookers roared. In her fantasies tucked layers and layers inside herself, into the mirrored rooms in her gem, she saw Jasper standing over a dozen fearsome and poofed gems, her muscles slick with sweat. She'd laugh and beckon to PB with four fingers. "Think you can take me? Let's see how much you've learned, Pearl."

Oh, how shocked the crowd would be, to see a little Pearl match fists and flips with a hero of the Earth Rebellion. A fearsome general and her Pearl, no one's instrument.

It couldn't happen. She shunted it to the recesses to gather dust, be forgotten, and went on, doing what she was meant to, being who she was designed to be.

* * *

  
Their last day together. If she had known it would be her last day she would have tried to remember Jasper better. Jasper had snapped quite unexpectedly, punched a desk so it cracked in two, and sank to her knees with her head in her palms.

"My Jasper," Pearl gasped.

The memory flickering, static taking sweet details from her. She had been made to worship her. PB was young, truly, by gem standards but she knew real love. This wasn't blind, saccharine obeisance. She loved her because of her imperfections, because of how jagged her edges were. Neither of them fit in on Homeworld; PB just hid it better.

Jasper shook and sobbed, clutching her head. Hurting. PB dropped everything and hurried to crouch in front of her, pushing back her mane of white hair to see the tears pouring out from between the cracks in her fingers. "Jasper, Jasper," she said. "What is it? What happened?"

"Can't-- can't talk about it," she groaned.

"Please tell me. I want to understand, how else can I help you if you don't talk?"

"What's the point of all this, huh, Pearl? My Diamond is never coming back. I failed her. *I* did. I'm no hero." The barriers came down, and Jasper moved her hands to expose her face, her agony. "No one else will ever matter like she did, Pearl. That's what's wrong."

PB clicked her tongue and sighed, teary, her fantasies crumbling. Jasper shouldn't have to fight for glory, not in her private thoughts, not to cover all of this hurt now exposed.

"You matter," she insisted, cradling her jaw with both hands, and swept in for a kiss.

Later, in the dark, she remembered salt water on her tongue, Jasper unexpectedly shy, unexpectedly letting her lead. Their gems alight and warm, bathing them in gold shine, their forms blurring and fading into each other, grief enfolded with love. And then Jasper shoved her, hard, breaking their connection and sending her crashing into a granite slab. Pain, different and deep, not on her skin but inside her. She reached up, wincing, for help.

Jasper breathed hard, struggling to regain the composure she'd kept up for years and failing. "Your gem..."

"Jasper," she said, and touched to her nose. A crack-- no, a shard missing from her gem.

"I'm poison, Pearl, don't you get that by now?" The way she scoffed and stood erect would have been more believable if PB's lips weren't tingling from their kiss, if she had kept it up and left her there to die. Instead she knelt close to her and reached for her gem, prying it quickly out from above her mouth--

Time didn't follow any solar logic in the bubble. Instead she dreamed. She dreamed of who she was up to then, the things she had done best and ways she had failed her own expectations. The mirrored rooms inside of her bubbled gem, endless capacity for memory and item storage, had somewhat shattered, leaving her reflections distorted as rippling water. The kiss pulsed through, that and up to the moments leading to being bubbled. No one's hero? No one else would have saved Pearl.

Time was a lovely thing. And then the boundaries of the bubble faded, blurred into Homeworld's atmosphere, and she took shape. The shape was all wrong, her outfit a mismatched mess, her features disfigured, her gem aching with a radiant pain reaching throughout her imperfect physical form. She blinked around, seeing for the first time in how many thousand years, and saw a bipedal creature with dark, curly hair, and it was looking at her with concern. Not an it: a human, a he.

"Jasper, where's Jasper," she cried out, grabbing his shoulders tight.

"Whoa, whoa. Jasper's on Earth, Pearl." He held her up as she suddenly collapsed, sobbing. "Here, let me help you. Sorry, I'm not being fresh, I swear." The human tilted her head up and pressed his lips to her cracked gem.

Once her form had recovered, he helped her to her feet and explained as much as she could take, and when she insisted that she didn't need rest, she needed to go to Earth, Pink Diamond himself walked her to the nearest warp pad. Her legs shook with each step, threatening to give out under her slight weight, and she didn't much care why. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else. Pink stopped her right before she set foot on the warp.

"Your gem, it's-- it's cracking again." He held his chin and mouth, thinking. "You must have been bubbled with a cracked gem for a long time. I'm not sure you should go anywhere, not until we figure this out. Actually, you definitely shouldn't."

"I have waited thousands of years for this, I am not waiting another *week,*" PB said. She launched into an air kick, sending him backwards far enough for her to center herself on the warp. The force of her attack had splintered her further. She crossed her arms in the Diamond salute. "I'm sorry, my Diamond." The words that came out weren't any legible language.

The warp helped hold her together long enough for her to reach Earth. It was beautiful, sure, but the most beautiful thing she could have seen was a familiar red-orange figure, close enough for her to reach if she could hold herself together long enough... One step. Another. One step. Another. Grass, this is grass, wet and scratchy and teeming with organic life... Her vision blurred and she fell to her hands and knees, wheezing. Jasper was already in front of her.

"You're a fool, PB. Steven's message got through, he told me what you did. You should've stayed there, you should've waited. What's wrong with you." Jasper pulled her fragmenting body into her arms and shook with suppressed tears. PB hadn't meant to make her cry. The shadows and colors of other gems fell over and around them like the kaleidoscope inside her, endless refractions of what couldn't be. Permutations of form and function flickering out of existence with each passing second, and all that really mattered was this reunion.

"You... you're okay...?" PB breathed. "Happy...?"

"Sure, happy. Why not." Jasper crushed her close, bowing her head. "I'm happy now."

The hum and pulse of energy from the warp rang out and Steven Universe came running too late to find the Crystal Gems huddled in a half-circle, Jasper sobbing in the middle, palms cupping the shattered remnants of a pearl.


End file.
